Meditations on the holy sacrament of the Lords last Supper Written many years sinceMeditations on the holy sacrament of the Lords last Supper Written many yeares since

And so it is in Faith. It frameth the heart to delight in all such spiritual food as is requisite thereunto. Disposing it upon the view, at lest upon the taste of any poisonous thing to be pained with it, and cast it up. The food that nourisheth Faith is as in little Infants, of the same quality with that which begat it, even the word of life, wherein there is sincere Milk, and strong meat. The poison which endangereth it is heresy, which tainteth the root of Faith, and goeth about to pervert the assent, and impiety, which blasteth, and corrupteth the branches. All which the soul of a Faithful man abhorreth.

And so it is in Faith. It frameth the heart to delight in all such spirituall food as is requisite thereunto. Disposing it upon the view, at lest upon the taste of any poysonous thing to be pained with it, and cast it up. The food that nourisheth Faith is as in little Infants, of the same quality with that which begat it, even the word of life, wherein there is sincere Milke, and strong meate. The poyson which endangereth it is heresie, which tainteth the roote of Faith, and goeth about to prevert the assent, and impiety, which blasteth, and corrupteth the branches. All which the soule of a Faithfull man abhorreth.

Secondly, in Faith there is a conversion likewise, the virtue whereof ever there resides where the vital power is. In natural life the power of altering is in the man, and not in the meat, and therefore the meat is assimilated to our flesh: but in spiritual life the quickening faculty is in the meat, and therefore the man is assimilated, and transformed into the quality of the meat. And indeed the word is not cast into the heart of man, as meat into the stomach, to be converted ⟨p. 229⟩into the corrupt quality of nature, but rather as seed into the ground to convert that Earth which is about it into the quality of it self.

Secondly, in Faith there is a conversion likewise, the vertue whereof ever there resides where the vitall power is. In naturall life the power of altering is in the man, and not in the meate, and therefore the meate is assimilated to our flesh: but in spirituall life the quickning faculty is in the meate, and therefore the man is assimilated, and transformed into the quality of the meate. And indeed the word is not cast into the heart of man, as meate into the stomacke, to be converted